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May 3, 2017

Sleepless (2017)

I saw this preview on TV and thought to myself, "I've wondered what happened to Jamie Foxx."

Then I saw the rest of the cast and thought, "So many big names! Is this movie new?"

Then I realized it had come and gone through the theaters and that the preview was actually just an ad on Comcast to get me to rent it.

So, having an extra $6 to burn and a husband who saved his currency from sitting through seven episodes of Big Little Lies, I watched it and found out the answers to all my questions. They are, in order: No, Jamie Foxx didn't disappear. He's still acting, but if there's a movie with a bunch of famous people that recently came out and you've never heard of it, there's probably a reason why.

It's not that the movie is terrible. It is, but just calling it terrible would be lazy, like this movie. That's the best way to sum it up: lazy. Lazy plot, lazy action, lazy everything. It is the epitome of every action/crime/corrupt police/drugs drama you've ever watched. You know exactly who the bad guys are from the onset, what's going to happen to them, and even how they're going to go about it. All suspense ends about five minutes into the movie. So instead, you're left with mindless fighting scenes, shoot outs, and the occasional overly dramatic line delivered by someone into a phone or from behind a gun.

But beyond that, it incorporates so much poor decision-making on the part of the characters it's practically a teen horror movie (let's split up and head into the dark woods!). Maybe I've vastly overestimated the intellect of the human population, but I imagine the average person would show some urgency in fleeing from a killer drug lord. But hey, that's just like, my opinion, man.

Final word: The only way this movie is surprising is that it doesn't star Mark Wahlberg.